Home Affairs

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

It is a great privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) and the many other speakers. In many ways, the Queen’s Speech debate is the panorama of all debates, with so many different themes raised. Even within the framework of home affairs, a huge range of issues come into play, as they have today, such as human trafficking, immigration and much else. I totally understand why many hon. Members want to cover a range of themes in their speeches in such a debate, but I want to restrict my comments to one area that is very important for us as legislators—the crime of online paedophilia and how we handle it as a society. The crime is immensely serious, and we should reflect that in our laws and sentencing.

It is totally right, in the words of the summary of the Serious Crime Bill in the document issued with the Queen’s Speech, that

“we can continue to effectively and relentlessly pursue, disrupt and bring to justice serious and organised criminals, guard against the threat of terrorism and protect vulnerable women and children.”

If we cannot do that, there is precious little point in having a Government at all. I welcome the fact that the Bill will create a new offence of possessing paedophilic manuals and, critically, that it will clarify the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 to make it explicit that cruelty likely to cause psychological harm to a child is an offence. Several hon. Members have already expanded on that.

It is important to introduce measures to tackle child abuse and emotional neglect and, moving on from that, to recognise the growing dangers of online paedophilia. Legislation is necessary if we are to tackle how we deal with those who use the internet to target children. I want to propose that Ministers listening to the debate today should consider toughening still further the law in this area. We may need to use primary legislation to bring in mandatory custodial sentencing in certain cases for which at present there is no such requirement.

I want to share with the Minister and the House a recent case in my constituency in which, in my view and that of many of my constituents, what took place was an absolute travesty of justice. Members may not be aware of the case of Dennis Igo from Bronington in my constituency. So appalled was I about the outcome that I have referred the case to the Attorney-General and asked him to review the sentence awarded.

For seven years, Mr Igo viewed and made well over 250,000 indecent images of children. Some of the images were of children as young as five. Many were of children being abused, and some were category 5 images. One national newspaper has stated in print that he had 99 of the most serious level 5 images. The collection included 834 films. The police were able to retrieve 255,667 images, and they have been quite clear that there were many more images, but the sheer quantity made it impossible to retrieve any more from the computer. There were also extreme images of bestiality.

For this catalogue of the most heinous crimes, Mr Igo was sentenced on 23 May—in our country—to a grand total of 300 hours of community work, with some specialised counselling and a two-year prison term suspended for two years. He was ordered to register with the police as a sex offender for 10 years, and he was given a 10-year sexual offences prevention order to restrict his future conduct. Before sentencing, he was not put on remand, but was out on bail. The view was taken that he could be managed in the community; the community he lives in does not share that view, and neither, most certainly, do I.

The mitigating circumstances were that the accused was depressed, his wife had been ill and he allegedly had financial problems, although I do not know whether the latter point was independently verified or whether there is evidence of his having sold any assets to deal with that if it was the case. Nevertheless, I do not believe that depression, a wife who has been ill, alleged money problems and, I suspect, a very clever lawyer, add up to mitigating circumstances for a non-custodial sentence in such a case. That is why I have asked the Attorney-General to review it.

It is no wonder that Claudia Knights, the chief executive of the child protection charity Kidscape, said of this case:

“The sentence does not reflect the severity of the case. It must not be forgotten that each indecent image involves real children. We have to ask what message such apparently lenient sentences send out to both abusers and victims of such crimes.”

By comparison, let us take another case, the sentencing for which took place in Peterborough Crown court two days before Mr Igo was sentenced in Mold Crown court for the offences that I have listed. In the Peterborough case, the court heard how the accused made indecent images of children available for distribution via a file-sharing software programme. Officers discovered 242 indecent images and 495 films. In the case that I have been describing, Mr Igo was sentenced on 16 separate charges; in the Peterborough Crown court case, the accused was sentenced on 10 counts. Igo and the accused in the Peterborough case were put on the sex offenders register for an identical length of time: 10 years. However, in the Peterborough Crown court case, the accused was also jailed for 16 months. After sentencing in the Peterborough Crown court case, a detective constable said:

“I hope this sends out a clear message that anyone who thinks they can access and share such images will not get away with it… We will find out and we will catch up with you.”

I recognise that there are differences in the two cases, but there is also clearly a massive discrepancy when 242 indecent images and 495 films mean jail for one person, yet, in the same jurisdiction, more than 255,667 indecent images and 834 films do not mean jail for another. That is why I hope that, following this debate, Home Office Ministers will look at the need for new primary legislation. Do they honestly believe that online paedophiles, especially those who have made and viewed such a huge number of indecent images, should seriously be out on bail before sentencing?

I believe that it is crucial that we look seriously at mandatory custodial sentences. Recently, we have heard many accounts of child abuse in the 1970s and 1980s and about how a previous generation of abused children went through hell. Sometimes, they spoke out and no one believed them; many times, they did not even feel that they could tell anyone. Whether it is true or not, we like to think that things like that belong to a past era and that they could not happen in quite the same way today. However, as we have that debate and as we debate the Queen’s Speech, let us not forget the world of online child abuse, where images are taken, used and abused; images of real children, wherever they may happen to live; images that are viewed and manufactured electronically.

The issues involved are serious for Governments and for us as legislators. As we speak, as we have done today, about paedophilic manuals and the emotional and psychological abuse of children, I hope that Ministers will seriously review and consider the need for new primary legislation in this area.